MovieChat Forums > Runaway Jury (2003) Discussion > Why is gun control brought up in this fi...

Why is gun control brought up in this film?

posted 14 years ago by standrkm
4 replies | jump to latest

It was a crazy guy who shot a bunch of people then shot himself. Why not blame first person shooter video games, his traumatic upbringing, depression, meds, violence in news or films? Why is there always this radical view towards the second amendment? We need to have the right to bear arms because there is always the threat of a tyrannical government and the far fetched case we are invaded by the Russians like in Red Dawn. I mean if we end up with another Hitler leading us don't you want to be able to defend yourself? I can see the need for regulating certain guns but taking away gun rights would be a huge mistake. Maybe we should first stop making assault rifles and banana clips for pistols. Last I checked mass shooting weren't being acted out with six shooters and lever actions. No matter what is done, criminals will always find guns. Don't let the gunslinger western films fool you. There were very few shooting in those days and everyone had to own a gun for many uses. In Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell, from 1870 to 1885, there were only 45 murders and those were the most violent towns. That's about 1 murder per 100,000 residents each year. Now, msot states get around 15 per 100,000. D.C. gets the highest as a matter of fact, 31 per 100,000. So out of it's 600,000 residents, 186 are shot to death per year in the capital of the U.S. lol. There's something deeper afoot.

Anyway, I thought the movie was pretty good like most Cusack films. A little troublesome at times and a little too fast paced at times but it was interesting and eye opening. I just think they should have atleast in some way or another mentioned the gunmans background and what type of weapons have been responsible for all those mass killings. Not once did they mention the murderers mind state, but I could be wrong.

“Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost 5,000 dollars. Because if a bullet cost five thousand dollar, we wouldn't have any innocent bystanders.”
-Chris Rock

If reincarnated,I'd return to Earth as a killer virus to lower population levels.
-Prince Phillip

[–] rsimard 13 years ago

Originally the villains were the major tobacco companies; they changed this film when The Insider grabbed that focus. There are obvious differences: there is nothing that can be considered philosophically equivalent to the Second Amendment for tobacco, but more to the point, unlike the attempts by Big Tobacco to deny the harm their product causes, the consequences of the use of firearms are obvious and undeniable.

If this film had stayed with Grisham's villain, it would be easier to critically address the film instead of the politics and ideology of the conflict.

[–] does_england_exist 13 years ago

i disagree, because often the consequence of the use of firearms is SAVED lives (unlike cigarettes). the major flaw in this film was that it depicted a witch hunt in place of the pursuit of justice against the ACTUAL wrongdoer, who was unavailable because he killed himself. if the shooter had been there to demonize, so they could watch him squirm and feel all justice-y, they would never have pursued the gun company. that in itself highlights what a miscarriage of justice they portray. if a guy kills himself and a family of five in a drunk driving incident, you don't hang the guy who sold the car to the him in his place. Actually, using this movie's logic, it's equivalent to hanging the guy who sold the guy the car who sold the alcoholic the car.

nonsense.

[–] rsimard 13 years ago

You're missing my point. In fact, I am for the most part a defender of Second Amendment rights personally.

As far as my own comment is concerned, perhaps I should have said that the immediate consequences are obvious, meaning that if you shoot someone they get hurt or die. In other words, I'm referring to the purely biomechanical effects of a bullet through the human body, completely apart from the issues of what reason and motivation there may have been for a particular shooting, who shot whom, and why, and how justified it was or wasn't, and the overall debate over gun rights in general, all of which are outside the scope of my comment.

Unquestionably this movie leans far in the direction of the gun-control viewpoint, and when I watch it I often cringe at the places where it seems they get a bit carried away with it. Still, given that they had a much better villain in the tobacco industry and were forced to abandon it and find something else, and then, when they did, make the villain villainous enough to make the story better than soporific, there wasn't much else to do, except maybe just drop the project altogether. Given that there's no paucity of left-leaning types in Hollywood, and they did have a basis for a movie that might be nice and profitable, I'd say there's nothing surprising there.

[–] d_henderson1810 13 years ago

I suspect that it was changed from smoking to gun control, to make the audience more sympathize with the victim.

If it was about the tobacco industry (as it was in the book), there would be people who would say that it was the victim's own fault for choosing to smoke, therefore he is partly negligent. But changing it to gun control, you can sympathise with the victim more (which I'm sure is the director's intention), as he was simply at work, and opened a door and got shot. So, it can be said that his death wasn't in any way his fault, just an unfortunate circumstance.

Obviously, you are supposued to side with the victim's wife, Hoffman's lawyer charcter, and Nick and his girlfriend. Making about the tobacco company would make it look like the victim was partly responsible for his own death.